Listenable: The Content to Set Your Podcast

People Behind the Scenes

The first guy I ever worked with in radio was Jack Diamond, a big-time radio personality. (His real name is Harvey Fischer.) I followed him from San Diego to Washington, DC, and for the first three-quarters of my career, I followed his lead, and his lead was a very structured show. There wasn’t a lot of spontaneity to it. Jack would come in with all of the things that he was going to talk about—he had them all set and ready to go. He was reading jokes and stuff out of the pages of prep services; it was just super structured.

This was my approach for most of my career. But when I realized I wanted to do my own show, I knew I had to find a different mentor who did something totally different. And that’s when I was hired by Kidd Kraddick, who I felt more in line with as far as a radio personality. He would come in with one idea, and he was just so incredibly creative that he could structure an entire show around that one idea. At least that’s what it looked like by the time he got in the studio. I don’t know what he was doing behind the scenes, but I remember sitting at the radio station and watching him pulling out the Dallas Morning News and, in pencil, writing two or three things to talk about. The entire show was those three ideas that he had right before we went on air. So it was just a completely different experience than I had had with Jack Diamond.

For my own show, I started taking different elements from both of these guys. It was probably one-fourth Jack Diamond and three-fourths Kidd Kraddick. My story illustrates how important it is to have experiences and surround yourself with people who have very different ideas than you do, and then having the humility to listen to them take your ego out of it and execute an idea that you’re not necessarily comfortable with.

I mentioned Aryeh Sheinbein and his “Lion’s Den Concept”—the idea that people tune in to learn about the unknown because what’s unknown is interesting. So he tries to feature guests who can shed light on the roads less traveled.

Aryeh knows—as I’ve learned—you can’t plot some easy course that the other guys are already exploring. You need to be open-minded to thought that exists outside the box. Then you’ll create an adventure where listeners will want to tag along.

The same goes when you’re managing any business or company. If you don’t listen to your advisers around you, and you think you’re the smartest one in the room, you will not succeed long term.

With these two mentors, I was the person behind the scenes for many years, so I learned both sides, and sometimes the hard way. So I’ve devoted this chapter to all the people who help pull our show together, and how you can build a team in a much easier way.

Know Your Strengths and Weaknesses

When I was putting The Bert Show together, I knew I needed some balance. The entire show, for as long as we’ve been on, has been based on trying to get a room filled with people bringing different experiences to the table. When I first started, I had no hosting experience at all—I had just been a sidekick or a co-host on other people’s shows. I knew I needed to hire support people who had a lot of experience with morning radio because, frankly, I didn’t know what the heck I was doing. I was filling that experience gap with producers who had worked on morning shows and really knew what they were doing.

There’s a tendency among new podcasters to bootstrap, roll up their sleeves, and do everything themselves. But if you’re building something aspirational that has a strong foundation and can be monetized based on episodes and downloads, then trust other people to make you better and faster. You’ll be able to produce more content. If you free yourself from the technicalities of doing all the junk behind the scenes, you can double your episodes. It’s an investment in yourself and your future.

Know what you’re strong at and know your weaknesses—where you need help. Then, hire the best and the people you trust to take over.

I know content. But what do I know about what mic to use or what do I know about marketing? Nothing. So I surround myself with the best people who will fill in those gaps. This also makes me a better talent because I don’t have to worry about that stuff. I’m outsourcing to the experts. For me, the most important parts of a podcast are the delivery, homework, and content. By surrounding yourself with experts, you allow yourself to grow.

Managing the people involved in your podcast is one of the most difficult aspects of podcasting. So if you have the money to hire a consultant—someone who is hearing all the sides and is playing ambassador among everybody on the show—this is, far and away, the most advantageous route to take. It can be challenging to find a highly qualified consultant, but I know one.

(I’ll endorse my own company here ’cause, hey, it’s my book, and I can. At Pionaire Podcasting, we do all this for our shows. It’s a talent owned and operated company. We’re not suits. Our background is in being creative. No pressure, but you’ll totally fail if you don’t hire us, and, again, you’ll be lonely the rest of your life because you failed miserably. Pionairepodcasting.com.)

Outsourcing 101

What brings a podcast to life best is when people finally decide to stop trying to edit it themselves and outsource it for $100 or an affordable going rate. This frees up your time and allows you to focus on research and other important elements of your show. But first you can find confidence in outsourcing by looking at your numbers; later, you can add other elements to outsource and delegate to your people behind the scenes.

Step one: Start keeping track of your metrics. How much do you make per episode? If you can outsource for less money than you make per episode and outsourcing allows you to produce additional episodes, then you’re able to outsource sooner than you think. You’ll have better use of your time and will make more money by creating additional episodes: maybe two per week instead of just one. It’s not just outsourcing for the sake of outsourcing. You’re outsourcing to create new dollars because you can make more money by going deeper and building your brand there. So really monitor your numbers, value their time, and see what you believe your time’s worth.

Step two: Find someone else to edit your podcast. You don’t have to hire the best; if you can outsource for $50 an episode just to take the tasks off your hands, even if it’s not the ideal person, you’ll get a head start on finding more time and money. I cannot stress how important this is. If you’re a new podcaster, outsourcing is absolutely mandatory. (And if you’re experienced, it’s strongly encouraged.)

I know it’s hard to give up control of the editing when only you truly know how you want your podcast to sound. Our egos are so tied up in our product that we might not really be giving our audiences only the “A” material and leaving the rest on the cutting room floor. Bottom line: outsourcing is too important a job to take lightly. It opens you up to do more promotion, connect with more people, produce more episodes, and get more people listening to your podcast. Outsourcing is an investment, and it allows you to make a bigger impact.

Step three: Outsource the moneymaking part of your podcast. Sites such as Patreon connect you to listeners who are willing to pay money for more episodes. If you have fifty people paying you $5 a month for an extra episode, that’s $250 bucks a month, which allows you to hire podcast editors.

From the Editor’s Eye

To give you a glimpse of why outsourcing the editing is a no-brainer, we picked the brains behind The Bert Show, Josh Hall, who makes us sound about a trillion times better with his tricks of the trade.

How frequently do you get content to edit?

I edit for different folks as frequently as they need. With podcasting, typically that’s a weekly cycle. In a perfect world, you’d get a few days to work on an edit, but oftentimes schedules require fast turnaround. It’s helpful to allow a day as well for all the participants to be able to listen back to the audio and make sure it’s up to spec before uploading for distribution.

How do you decide what stays and goes?

Often you’ll get notes from the recording session about important areas to address with minute and second marks. These will typically be of the “so and so forgot something and we had to look it up; edit at 32 mins and 15 secs” variety—maybe notated as 32m 15s, or the most common 32:15. Again, sometimes in a quick turnaround situation, one needs to get right to work.

I suppose there are two types of edits—what you might call logical and emotional edits. Logical edits are stutters or word fumbles that are common in everyday speech, including long pauses, coughs, sniffles, phone rings, someone banging into the mic stand, or even the occasional belch.

Emotional edits are based on what’s said contextually. For example, if I tell a story where I pause or stumble, it might reveal something I don’t say directly. Does my pause carry the same emotional resonance if edited shorter? Does the impact increase or decrease with an edit? That sort of thing.

A middle space between logical and emotional might be the time it takes to breathe. If you’ve ever heard an edit of a solo voice speaking with no time to breathe, you can imagine the nonstop energy of going and going without taking even a second to reflect or inhale as the most basic function of being in a body could be exhausting to the ear as it doesn’t reflect a reality that anyone experiences in talking with another person. Or at least not the kind you’d want to listen to again!

A good edit might ebb and flow—always with remembering the final listener experience. Will they be bored or interested? Is the extra detail in the story distracting or does it enhance the understanding and impact of the payoff for sitting through it?

How do you work on the transitions?

Besides editing audio, I might be asked to help with additional sounds blended together with music and sound to help create a mood for the final production or even a theme (or bed) to talk over for a specific podcast.

Typically, these would be produced in pre-production, so I’d have them ready when it’s time to edit and mix the final podcast. I could reuse them each week.

What tips can you share with new podcasters outsourcing their editing?

Good editors are comfortable with sitting in front of a computer screen—and seeking to understand the POV of the person speaking and how it relates to the overall presentation and audience.

You want people to look good (or sound good) to themselves and others. A host or co-host who knows they’ll be looked over with thoughtful consideration will be confident to give a more free performance, knowing someone has his or her back down the line.

Here’s an insider tip for editing audio:

Besides the typical “waveform editing,” which is seeing sound as drawing that increases or decreases in height and/or depth based on the volume (decibels, db) of the sound across a length of time, there’s also “spectral editing.” And it can be used alongside a traditional waveform. With spectral editing, sound shows up based on sound frequency (Hz, not volume) graph across a length of time.

Looking at a waveform versus spectral drawing will reveal different aspects of a sound recording and are helpful when used together to ensure you place your edits at “clean points” for smooth sound edits.

Set Yourself Free

Mark Podolsky is the self-proclaimed “Land Geek”—a guy who’s figured out how to make millions by investing in real estate and now coaches others in the art of getting dirt rich. He has a pretty successful podcast, too, but I include him in this book because he’s the King of Outsourcing. Mark whittled his actual working hours to about two per month by outsourcing everything from deeds to due diligence. This requires super-savvy delegation skills, which Mark has down to a science. At the core of what makes it work is that he records himself doing the task once and gives that video to the editor. Just start a Zoom call alone, share your screen, and talk through everything you’re doing and why. Then outsource to a pro but give them the freedom to improve the process. The video gives them your thoughts and sensitivities—and being open to their suggestions gives them the freedom to improve things further using their expertise.

The Best of the Best

When it comes to feedback you must avoid one thing: do not ask your friends or family to listen to your podcast and give you help. You actually sought out the one person in the world more clueless than you for feedback! They are too close to you to give advice, and you are too close to them to listen to it constructively. Nothing good comes from this. Ever.

So where do you find someone with impeccable expertise in content and delivery—someone who can listen with a professional, tender ear and give you constructive feedback to take you to the next level? My hand is raised! At Pionaire Podcasting, I am the consultant to all our talent and I love this part of the job. I’ll listen to your podcast and you and I can put a game plan together based on your strengths and unique personality to create a show that connects with your listeners by highlighting your content and delivery. I’ve focused my entire career on content and delivery, and I’m in the trenches every day, still creating both. I’d love to see if we’re a good fit and bring your podcast to meet your goals. Hit me up at pionairepodcasting. com/consulting. I’m the adorable lil’ guy on the home page. Some say dashing, even.

NOW HEAR THIS

• Know what you’re strong at and know your weaknesses—where you need help. Then, hire the best and the people you trust to take over.
• Outsource to create new dollars because you can make more money by going deeper and building your brand.
• There is no shame in asking for help!